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jimmymcchill · 2 years

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also with the break up, my fave thing is how their fatal flaws clashed? Jimmy is desperate for a quick fix, his identity is as stable as sand, and he'd filled up his self aware/taking responsibility quota for the day, while Kim is so unable to bear someone saving or protecting her that she kept Lalo to herself, her integrity is feeding into her god complex of not existing is all she deserves (quick sidebar for Rhea's galaxy brain using all the "she's in her Gene era" words to make me crazy). it made me wanna throw up! they can't leave her thinking being a cashier is all she deserves! but it really was so good

i think it's potentially a masterpiece IF they handle everything well from now on. and i say it as someone who was deeply triggered by the themes of grief, guilt and abandonment of the episode. of course i fully believe in them, because so far they've never let me down, but there's always some fear — it's never easy to write an ending, no matter how good you are. i am pretty sure they will take the whole narrative in places we can't even imagine, which is fine by me, since most scenarios i can picture are not of my liking... but yeah, 609 has a lot, a lot of potential. and, as something with potential, right now it has something missing. kim is missing. her fate. that, pardon the pun, can't be just determined by fate. i am tired of reading about how she was slippin' kimmy from the start so this was her destiny all along — something they say about jimmy as well that i honestly absolutely do not agree with. i read a lot about what jimmy and kim supposedly "deserve", i wrote about it myself, but that's not the point. we're not a jury, we're spectators, and the writers shouldn't be judges. the point is: we've learned to know kim and jimmy, their beauties and flaws, and if there's something they deserve, is to give a climax to their actions and stories and frailties. to understand what they have done, grieve in a way that is not self destructive and somehow find peace. i personally have no interest, especially after 609, in seeing an escalation of sorrow — there's been a lot of that already. which doesn't mean i necessarily want a classic happy ending, just one where there is growth and closure and realization that their love was more than its toxic traits — that, just like in the heartbreak of 609, there is potential there. potential for kim, for gene — pardon, jimmy. potential for something more than mere essentialism.

#wow this was way too long #sorry but i have too many thoughts about the show rn #what is gonna happen will change how i see bcs forever because TRIGGERS and everything #but also because this was never a show about what we deserve but who we are #bcs #bcs s6 spoilers #ask

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quirkless-and-embarrassed · 4 years

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Sir Nighteye

Ok, I watched the anime and felt like doing another character meme!

Spoilers for Overhaul arc/season four of the anime.

Favorite thing about him:

I like that Nighteye didn’t allow his admiration of All Might to turn him into a pushover. Such adulation could have blinded him to All Might’s flaws, something Midoriya struggles with, but Nighteye stood firm, spoke his mind, and took action in accordance with what he believed. The way Nighteye willingly, gladly admits to being wrong (about Midoriya and All Might’s decision to fight fate) makes it clear that it wasn’t pride that drove Nighteye away from All Might, but actually principles and genuine concern/panic. Nighteye was happy to be wrong, even though it meant that his failures to change the future were true failures and not simply something out of his control. Knowing this enabled Nighteye to let go of his underlying fear that his quirk didn’t just see the future, it set the future in stone, and he’s able to die peacefully after giving All Might and Midoriya his full, unconditional approval, and after internally apologizing to Mirio for seeing him as a vessel before realizing the error of his ways.

Nighteye presumably awakened his quirk when was four or five, and he was thirty-eight when he died. That’s thirty-four years—he could have used his quirk easily thousands of times, maybe more than ten-thousand—and never once has the future significantly deviated from what he saw. Essentially, his quirk’s been the daily Word Of God since he was five years old. It’s easy for Midoriya or Rock Lock to say, bring it on, I can smash fate; for Nighteye, who has actually tried, it’s a completely different ballgame. He knows what it MEANS to try to change to fate, but he’s determined to try anyways.

I like the balance Nighteye strikes between fierce idealism and calculated realism. Yeah, the narrative often criticizes realism for not being plus ultra, but it’s a quality I like. Nighteye wanted to carefully plan Eri’s rescue and Overhaul’s arrest, but his caution didn’t make him any less committed or passionate, or any less admirable than anyone who would have (tried to) saved her immediately (it’s not like Overhaul would let anyone walk away with her).

I like his hero name. The Sir invokes the honor of a knight, All Might’s vassal, the “eye” is obvious, and “night” because he can see in the “dark”: the future is clear to him. Plus, I like the night/knight pun.

I also like just how gangly, angular, and weird he looks. He has some quality body language with the angle of his head.

Least favorite thing about him:

His stamps…his abs…come on. He doesn’t need to a fantastic fighter. His stamps are a funny weapon to be sure, but it irritates me that they’re as strong as they are. It’s ridiculous that Nighteye could cartoonishly hurl Rappa the way he did, and it was stupid to tear his shirt to show off how ripped he was. I felt like Horikoshi was trying to show us that Nighteye meets the standards of a conventional hero, when he could be just as much of a hero using his brain. At the most, someone like Nighteye, who emphasizes logic and excels at predicting opponents’ next moves, should be carrying a gun like the police.

The tickle machine. Eughh. I could barf at how much I hate it.

It’s also frustrating that Nighteye completely wrote Midoriya off as a “quirkless middle-schooler” who could never become the Symbol of Peace and actively undermined All Might even now that he was finally raising a successor. I can at least respect how upfront he is about it: Midoriya knows what he’s getting into by the time he submits his work study application to UA. But even without that, Nighteye doesn’t trouble me as much as he did the first time I read the manga because 1) I figure Nighteye saw Midoriya when he foresaw All Might’s doomed future, because Midoriya is such a big part of his life that of course Nighteye saw him, 2) Nighteye is aware that they’re working on an extremely tight timeline: All Might is due to die within the next year or two, so picking a baby successor who’s going to need tons of hands-on guidance is a bad move, and 3) Nighteye paid the price for his “quirkless” comment when Mirio lost his quirk, and, despite what he said, it was clear that he didn’t love Mirio less, or respect him less as a hero, because of it.

I like that Nighteye appreciates humor, but his final speech about laughter and smiling, combined with Mirio’s determinedly positive reaction, makes me think that he may not have taught Mirio that it’s okay to be sad, that you don’t need to always smile. That would be a disappointing failure on Nighteye’s part, since the overwhelming pressure All Might feels to be positive+proactive is part of what made him unable to accept Nighteye’s criticism. It also fits with how Nighteye’s inner monologues tend to be more sympathetic than his actual dialogue, so maybe Nighteye should have tried to be less didactic and tell Mirio that he has been Nighteye’s pride and joy, instead of thinking that and giving Mirio a last speech on the importance of smiles and humor. I think he would have been a better teacher if he’d allowed himself to be more sentimental.

Favorite line:

My absolute favorite is in ch137, as he observes Mirio’s guilt from letting Overhaul retrieve Eri and bring her back to his headquarters. Nighteye thinks:

I can’t say whether or not the future can be changed. But we can change the past. How we view the past and interpret it. That much is possible.

It’s an important life lesson, and I like how he inverts the typical, “the past can’t be changed, but you can control the future so that’s what matters” perspective.

I also like it in ch130, when Nighteye berates-slash-comforts Midoriya, who regrets allowing Overhaul take Eri back: “Enough of that arrogant thinking! Haste makes waste. Go after him haphazardly, and he’ll slip through our fingers. You’re not quite so special as to save whom you want, when you want.” Then he elaborates on their plan and finishes with a bang: “The world is not so accommodating that you can act the hero because you feel like it. The cleverest villains out there lurk in the shadows. There will be times when every precaution must be taken.”

One more, in ch161. When he’s on his deathbed, Nighteye looks at Mirio and thinks, In the beginning…I only brought you in as a potential vessel, but you stuck by me, believed in me, and at some point…you became my pride and joy.

BROTP:

Him and Mirio. I love how Nighteye took Mirio under his wing in a half-logical way, viewing him as All Might’s proper successor, only to accidentally raise Mirio as his own successor.

I wish we got to see Nighteye and Aizawa interact more. They’re both the rational mentors who get attached to their kids. It would have been nice to see Aizawa talk to Nighteye about his problem child or about Mirio, or to help Midoriya navigate his relationship with Nighteye, but since Aizawa doesn’t know about OfA and Nighteye was on his way out anyways…oh well.

I’d also love to have seen Nighteye and Hawks interact. They’re connected on a meta level, as the unofficial righthand men of the #1 heroes, and also by the idea of fate. Nighteye’s arc centered on the fact he could see the future, and the future he saw could not be changed. Hawks may or may not know it, but the imagery surrounding him is unmistakeable, and we the readers know that some sort of doom is waiting for the man who goes too fast. Whether Hawks can defy fate or if he’ll be crushed by it remains to be seen (and, like Nighteye, he’s not looking promising).

Hawks takes one look at Nighteye—perfectly pressed suit, pinched, no-nonsense expression and all—and is like oh this guy looks like he’s gonna be fun. Nighteye looks even more tightly wound than Endeavor. But actually, Nighteye actually respects and appreciates Hawks’s cavalier attitude! And though they rarely see each other, since they live far apart, they become friends who mainly swap information and keep each other up to date on villain things. Occasionally Hawks will see something ridiculous, like a meme or something, and send it to Nighteye, and Nighteye follows Hawks on social media and sometimes likes his stuff.

It’d be especially interesting to see them disagree about All Might. Nighteye is such a hardcore fanboy, Hawks professes to not be a fan, the Symbol of Peace is such an important part of how Nighteye envisions the future, and it’d be interesting to hear Hawks’s perspective on the Symbol of Peace and where it fits into his vision of the future.

I also appreciate Nighteye and All Might’s relationship, but like…idk, they got so little time together in canon, I kinda prefer to think of it as a dead brotp. Even if Nighteye had survived, I would kinda want his relationship with All Might not to be very close, because even though they weren’t angry anymore didn’t mean they could pick up where they left off.

OTP:

Hmm…not really anyone. I haven’t read much Nighteye fic. There is this one touching soulmate AU where he and All Might both bear the black symbol of someone who has been rejected by their soulmate…here.

NOTP:

No, not really.

Random headcanon:

One of the reasons he reacted so harshly to Midoriya as All Might’s successor is that when he foresaw All Might’s death, he also saw Midoriya. Midoriya’s failure to protect All Might from his gruesome death revealed him as an unfit successor, and he believes if he can remove Midoriya from the equation, then he will have changed the future.

Nighteye helped All Might track down AfO to avenge Nana, and he felt partially responsible for All Might’s injury in addition to fearing that his quirk set All Might’s future in stone.

Nighteye used his quirk on All Might between surgeries, because he couldn’t stand not knowing whether All Might would survive his wounds from AfO or not. He should have stopped when he saw All Might survived, but—he’s such a fanboy, and he saw that future!him was terrified and arguing with All Might about something, and he knew immediately just from the expression on his own face that he’d foreseen All Might’s death. He couldn’t resist looking ahead to find it and learn how much time All Might had left.

…part of me thinks that the reason Nighteye’s foresight was wrong about Midoriya’s death was because Eri also has a time-related quirk, and there was nothing Midoriya really did to change fate. Which would be sad, but. Yeah.

I’d like to think that Nighteye had a really wacky, judgmental cat with a questionably funny name. It sat on top of the fridge and looked down on him when he came home late. After his death, it becomes his agency’s cat and harbors a dangerous grudge against Bubble Girl’s aromatic bubbles.

Unpopular opinion:

It seems like plenty of people dislike him, so…I like him? He’s not even close to one of my favorites, but still.

Even though I like him, I was surprised to discover he was dead—I forgot he died, so I guess his death scene didn’t leave an impression on me. Looking back on it, I think it’s a nice enough scene, but at the time I was probably too exasperated by the overhaul arc as a whole to care much.

idk, I don’t see people talk about him much.

Song I associate with him:

uh…um…well……there isn’t really any music I associate with him. Here are a few songs that are very loose associations, I guess.

Darkside of the Sun by Tokio Hotel reminds me of how All Might’s public persona has taken over his identity, and Nighteye is seeking to save his life by retiring his persona.

Carry Me Down by Demon Hunter has the line “I know the pain inside my heart / can’t break the fear inside of yours,” which reminds me of Nighteye’s grief can’t persuade All Might to confront the reality of his imminent death, plus other stuff in the song about unspoken regrets and death.

And last, Turns to Dust by Sound Surfer and Nilka reminds me of Shigaraki (for obvious reasons), but I think it also speaks to Nighteye’s fear of his quirk.

Favorite picture of him:

Ch126 – Nighteye’s glare when Midoriya mimics All Might’s smile! He sure is intimidating 😂

Episode 75 – This moment did nothing for me in the manga, but it was genuinely moving in the anime. The voice acting and music <3

I’ve also done Todoroki, Bakugo, Uraraka, Endeavor, Amajiki, and Shinsou!

#sir nighteye #nighteye #sasaki mirai #bnha #bnha s4 spoilers #nerd mumbling #text #ask meme #mirio #hawks

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solacefruit · 5 years

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What’re your thoughts on the trope of a former antagonistic or villainous character changing sides (let’s say not because their ideals/what they’re fighting for changes, but because their ideas about what the best way to achieve that have changed)? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, as it’s something I struggle with at times with a character of mine (her starting off on the side of the villains, and then changing sides to join the heroes is super important for her arc). Thanks a bunch!

Hello there! Thank you for asking. This is such a fun question!

I usually get a real kick out of antagonist-becomes-friend (or at least becomes temporarily or occasionally non-antagonistic) tropes. I personally think you can split the trope a few ways, depending on specific iterations of it. For example, there’s the complete change of heart, where someone goes “oh damn I was evil and I don’t want to be anymore,” and then there’s the enemy of my enemy is my friend approach, where an antagonist teams up with the protagonist–or at least doesn’t act antagonistically–because they share a common, greater threat, but could lapse back into old habits as soon as that passes.

I’m not entirely sure what sort you’re talking about–it’s a little unclear from your wording–but I’m going to guess you mean they’re a little more anti-hero than outright villain, given that their ideals apparently line up with the protagonist’s, but their methods previously didn’t. Unless you mean the ideals–i.e., “doing bad things,” or whatever–stay the same, but the character hides those intentions and acts like they’ve given up on that? I would say that latter one is actually not the trope at all: that’s just plain villainy and deception. Anyway! A lot more underneath the cut.

At the moment, my partner and I are watching Buffy (I’ve never seen any of it before), and this is a real timely question, because that series has a great example of both kinds of “villain becomes friend (becomes villain again)” tropes in action using vampires. On one hand, you have Angel, who is originally just a normal guy, turned into a vampire with a talent for being wildly sadistic, and then as punishment for that, he gets given a soul. That returned humanity and enforced sense of morality overwhelms him with guilt for all his past crimes, so then he chooses to do good things to make up for it. Of course, throughout the show, his soul flip-flops due to magic shenanigans and he reverts to evil version a bit, but I think that’s an interesting counterpoint to the other vampire: Spike.

He’s just a solidly bad dude, albeit often not a very capable one, and most of the time he’s an antagonist–except for in circumstances where his goals (typically not dying, getting his girlfriend back, whatever) align with the protagonist team’s. We’ve just got up to the part where he’s been fang-neutered, for lack of a better word, so he’s been sulking about unable to bite anyone and turned essentially into everyone’s weird, sullen, harmless roommate (which has been extremely fun). Once he realises he can fight–and kill–other demons, however, he perks right up and actively and voluntarily wants to participate in protagonist team’s world-saving duties, because it lets him be awful again, as long as he’s only awful to demons.

What I like about these two is that they seem to represent two different conceptualisations of morality, but within the same show! Angel is thoroughly a deterministic case: when he has a soul, he is good, and when he has no soul, he is evil. There’s never any wavering either way–he never has a “but what if I chose to be good?” moment when he’s full demon (the implication for the entire show until that point being that vampires can’t and won’t make moral choices), and he never finds vampire sobriety a challenge as a souled being and is overall a soft, sweet guy. Angel is essentially two entirely separate people in one form: a “good” self and a “bad” self, both of which are more or less externally triggered by whoever is cursing him at the time. ***ooh, someone please ask me about Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde sometime, please, I can talk on that topic for a century***

Spike, by contrast, is a representation of morality as a forever shifting spectrum of choices. I think this is why I find Spike to be a more interesting character than Angel (although don’t get me wrong, Angel is nice and I like him). I like that Spike has such a wide range of emotions and motivations he’s allowed to experience and express, rather than being dictated his sense of self by fate and destiny, so on, and that–at least where we’re up to at the moment in this show–he’s doing “the right thing” (trying to kill bad dudes who want to destroy the world) for “the wrong reasons” (he enjoys the killing way too much and also is bored) and for now that’s working for everyone so everyone’s rolling with it. That’s just so fun to me. But I do tend to really enjoy moral ambiguity in general.

I think two other interesting case studies (I guess?? I guess we can call it that) for this is of course Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender and also I feel several characters from Steven Universe, but primarily Peridot! They’re great examples of why characters “switch sides” and how to do that in a way that’s convincing and true to character, which I think lines up pretty well with what you’ve mentioned wanting to do? In both the instances, there is very little personality shift, especially to begin with. Eventually, character growth occurs, but personality doesn’t change a whole lot, and I feel this is really effective for a lot of reasons but mainly that you don’t lose that character and have to replace them with a new one. You don’t Angel-ify them, is what I’m saying.

Peridot and Zuko have a really similar major turning point for their shift in team: confronting an authority figure they trusted and revered. Recognising the imperfections in the person they idolise causes them both to massively question their own worldview, and their place in the world, and resultantly their role in what’s going on. Peridot rejects Yellow Diamond’s leadership and joins the rebels; Zuko rejects Ozai’s leadership and joins the avatar. What I like so much about this is what I like about Spike: it’s about choice. For Zuko and Peridot, it’s a choice to reject determinism and destiny and instead take on moral responsibility. And they do that without changing who they are.

I feel like that’s vital for a successful team-switch story: the catalyst for their change should be something that changes their perspective, not their personality. Whether it’s an external threat that drives them to realise they’re in the same boat as the protagonist whether they like it or not, or it’s a major realisation about someone else/the state of the world and their culpability in it, I feel like a really good catalyst should–if at all possible–come about because of who a character is.

For example, Peridot’s devotion to logic and reason is a signature character trait. When Yellow Diamond, the ruler she adores and believes to be the pinnacle of this way of being, blatantly acts in total disregard of logic and instead behaves foolishly out of emotion, Peridot renounces her. The other approach is more similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy, really: Zuko’s (albeit longer realisation) comes from a comparison between his father and his uncle and also from his experiences seeing how the world really is versus his father’s lies, all of which happens because Ozai banished him. Zuko’s sense of honour (which is from the beginning far more honed than his father’s!) can’t coexist in peace with the hypocrisies he’s witnessed in his family and nation, so he is drive to actually choose the real honorable path–which is to turn traitor to the Fire Nation.

I think these kinds of set-ups make for the most satisfying bad guy-to-good guy narratives, personally. I hope this has been an interesting read for you!

#reply #thoughts #buffy the vampire slayer #steven universe #avatar the last airbender #i have no idea if this is the kind of thoughts you meant? please write in if i'm way off #this was a lot of fun! thank you again for asking it. i've had a rough week already (it's only tuesday night) and this was good.#unfortunately i'm a wordy boy so any question gets an essay answer so i hope that's what you're here for because that's what you get.

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desertbroad · 5 years

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kaj + (inverted) tropes: part two! * * i don’t know all the actual Official TM names for these tropes, so most are made up. also, you might notice the regular trope list (part 1 of this headcanon) is significantly longer. this is because kaj has a few main inverted tropes but tons more regular ones, since tropes are like atoms: they make up everything. i just wanted to focus on the few inversions that created her character and let the rest come naturally! under a read more for length. ** also as of 7/6/19 part one isn’t done yet. yes i know please don’t shame me ok IM GETTING TO IT

fridged woman (aka back from the dead)—

for this one i took inspiration from laura moon from american gods, with a few tweaks (love neil gaiman, but some of the things about her character are...a bit squicky). unlike a good number of women in media, kaj isn’t shoved over gently and pronounced dead so that a man can grow from her pain. in fact, she’s shot in the head twice, pronounced dead, & buried. while her “death” means more pain and character development for the characters surrounding her, it means pain and character development for her, too. truth be told, she survives a hell of a lot more than any average person should, especially one with her low luck stat. half of this is the fun and wacky way new vegas’ world works (obviously, no real person could survive all this), but also because of her good ol’ courier determination. things that should’ve fridged kaj but haven’t include: two shots to the head, numerous combat scrapes, being stabbed, having her brain/heart/spine removed, having a bomb collar attached to her neck, killing an entire fortification of trained legionnaires, stepping on landmines, etc etc. the courier is pretty much the bruce willis of fallout.

world ending vengeance—

specifically applies to certain characters. while most others who piss kaj off get the full brunt of her wrath (see: caesar, mr. house, elijah, general oliver, ulysses), benny, along with dr. mobius & the think tank & mcnamara*, get a pass. in fact, she lets him go not once or twice, but on three separate occasions, even knowing he’s likely to betray her again. the reason why? not even kaj knows. some people speculate it’s because she likes him / slept with him (incorrect; she liked house to a degree, and slept with caesar); others speculate it’s because they’re so similar (also incorrect; she shared an alarming number of similarities with ulysses & elijah). the theory that comes closest to the truth is that she pities him. it fits in line her past behavior with mobius & the think tank, who were physically unable to see the effects of their actions and thus were spared a horrible fate. likewise, kaj seems to have judged benny to be innocent in her own personal court, and though he continues to be a thorn in her side again and again, she refuses to “sentence” him for anything. it helps his cause that his plan helped her take over vegas, and he created yes man, one of the only living beings she’s ever fully trusted. also a slight inversion of kaj’s maneater / black widow trope; the one person she truly should seduce and kill, she doesn’t.

that said, benny doesn’t get away from their encounters without any punishment—after narrowly escaping being crucified, both kaj and benny have matching rope burns around their wrists. it’s her morbid idea of a joke.

*mcnamara doesn’t fit within this trope, but kaj spares the bos for veronica & christine’s sake, despite yes man’s warnings. also for the off chance that they might convert to being her allies (they don’t, and this choice helps lend itself to more BOS trouble all over the wasteland).

white man cowboy—

kind of a simple inversion that’s been done before, but an important one and one that i like a lot. for starters, the “john wayne” cowboy is a bastardization of a history that was made up of ethnic minorities and whitewashed for hollywood aesthetic (also fuck you john wayne). while none of my research has come up with anything about women of color or nonbinary people in the western scene, only moc (whether this is intentional or not, i’m not sure), i still wanted to write kaj as non-male. frankly, this is because i wanted her to be an inversion of tired tropes, and that included being a debonair, byronic woman / non gender conforming hero (think gentleman jack) instead of a debonair, byronic white dude. we’ve got 20 of those for every fleshed out woman/enby on screen, lbr. kaj is also a femme fatale, but only by coincidence; she’s more of a wandering heart breaker than a necessarily dangerous woman, much like many of the heroes on screen.

i also find that non-men of color are one of the most underrepresented minorities in fiction—even media that celebrates diversity simplifies them down (hamilton), or centers their narrative and entire purpose around a man (hamilton, again). nevermind nonbinary people / trans folk. for that reason, i wanted kaj’s story to be about a woman of color / someone who doesn’t conform to expectations and doesn’t allow herself to be put in the sidelines for a white person or a male to lead her life. and regardless of whether a woman filling this swaggering, womanizing cowboy role is accurate to history or not, fallout’s setting lends itself an air of exaggeration, so i felt it was appropriate to include her here, instead of arguing with people over whether someone like her existed in actual history (my suspicions say yes, and that these people have simply been erased from the narrative for the convenience of certain people’s feelings, but still).

smarter than you look / deadly doctor (this one actually has a tvtropes page! look it up!)—

from the deadly doctor page : ‘ surely the ultimate example of the morally ambiguous doctorate. one reason for this is due to all his/her training : while having advanced knowledge on the human body can be used to save people, it also gives all the knowledge on how to injure and kill people with minimal effort by knowing all the body's weak points. some more sympathetic examples equate to the medical version of a well-intentioned extremist, who may certainly have good (or at least sympathetic/understandable) intentions but ruthless medical ethics. ’

one of the most important things kaj took from her thorough education is medical training—unable to depend on anyone after being traumatized, trusting any doctor who happened along to treat her illnesses was out of the question. she was also smart enough to know the original kaj wouldn’t be around to heal her up forever. thus, she began her training as a self preservation instinct; but over time, as she grew and relearned how to be compassionate and empathetic, she decided to use healing for good, too. trained as a young girl by the original kaj, and then later trained officially as a combat medic by the ncr, kaj has spent a countless amount of hours inside army tents, healing wounds and assisting doctors with tough cases. she even keeps a medical bag on her person for exactly that sort of situation (especially since supplies in the mojave aren’t exactly easy to dig up). though she’s a big scientist in general (the big mt saw to that), medicine is her specialty. she’s even stitched up her own wounds, though it’s not something she particularly enjoys (it takes a lot of whiskey and something for her to bite down on).

for reference, consider this scene of anton from no country for old men (TW: he’s performing self surgery, so it’s pretty gruesome). though both anton and kaj’s lifestyles are rough and even sadistic at times, they both still have medical training—if not to protect others, then to at least protect themselves. and like anton, it shows kaj’s inability to trust anyone with her most important commodity: herself. this makes her surgery in the big empty doubly as horrifying, given she took specific pains for something like this to not happen. it’s why she refuses to leave without all of her organs (also, stubbornness). all of this is just one of the ways kaj is way more ... well, everything than she looks. which leads into...

underestimate me if you dare, aka femme fatale (sort of?)—

though fallout prides itself on being a soft reset on the world, people’s perceptions of minorities are still ... iffy, due to real world influences by the creators. thus, the people around kaj often jump to assumptions about her based on her identity—mostly, that she’s weak. once, it offended her, but now it’s a perception that she encourages. after all, she’s not flat out strong like your usual hero, but is more of a hamlet-type; smart, perceptive, fast, and willing to strike from the shadows. it’s hard to do any of that if you’re putting on a big performance about your power (though admittedly, she’s been known to go big or go home if she’s planning on killing everyone; if she’s not faking nice and telling you what you wanna hear, trouble’s ahead).

of course, the reality is that kaj is a powerhouse. but these perceptions about her supposed weakness are why posing as a legion member is so easy—those who think she’s weak underestimate her or keep their distance, which gives her leave to do what she wants. she’s viewed more like a pet than a person by most, and though it frustrates her at times to pretend, it also gives her leave to do more, than if she were to simply pose as a man.

all that said, kaj doesn’t exactly qualify as a femme fatale. most of her lovers are just information givers, and they escape from their interaction unharmed. kaj killing her bed mates is actually less likely than her just sparing them and letting them go, none the wiser. of course, you kill one tyrant (maybe two or three) and suddenly you’re a black widow—

#headcanon.#long post //#sb: if you love benny so much why dont you make a blog for him #me: THAT OPENS THE DOOR................#if i make one for benny i will make one for every one of my fnv faves and it will just be a MESS !!!#anyway hi heres the basis of kaj's character in a neat post !#i think i got everything

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robindaydream · 6 years

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My tabletop group played a campaign of Fate recently and I have a lot of thoughts about it and it got me thinking a lot about RPG mechanics.

I didn’t love Fate. I think it had a lot of cool ideas, and I liked how it got rid of a lot of the math and dice rolling and multi-page spreadsheets, but ultimately, I don’t think it worked as well in practice as in theory.

For those that don’t know, in Fate, your characters’ core traits are defined by “aspects.” An aspect is just a little phrase about your character that defines some part of them. Maybe a wizard has the aspect “Likes conjuring fire more than controlling it,” or a thief has the aspect “Loves to brag about their accomplishments.” A good aspect has ways you can use it (getting a bonus to casting fire magic, or convincing someone that you can do a job), and ways it can be used against you (being unable to control a spell you cast, or bragging about your illegal activities to the wrong person). Each character starts with a few of them, and they can change as your character does.

And that’s a really cool idea! I love that! I love it because it’s something you could only do in a tabletop game. No computer could replicate a mechanic like that. And I love it because it’s a really simple way of marrying mechanics and narrative. Your aspects describe your character as a person and their place in the world, and they also have a function in the rules of the game. It’s just really neat.

But in practice, I feel like our characters’ aspects didn’t matter as much as they could have. Partly this is because it is actually quite hard to write good aspects. It’s easy to think of defining features of your character, but it’s hard to compress those features into little nuggets of information that will regularly be useful for (or against) you. So it’s easy to make a character and then feel like your aspects aren’t good for anything, or that they’re good for situations you’re never in.

And because invoking an aspect isn’t free, I often felt like “oh I don’t need to use it, so I’ll save up,” which ultimately was always unnecessary. And that all combines into a system that's kind of hard to play with, and ends up feeling like a cool idea that isn’t actually present while playing. I ended up wishing I had more aspects so I could get a little more granular with them and they’d be more useful, and that they didn’t necessarily cost something, or at least didn’t always. It doesn’t make sense to me that a player trying to use their character’s strengths and help tie that narrative and gameplay together should have to pay a cost for it. That seems to me like something that should be encouraged.

Another interesting thing in fate is that there are four basic actions you can take (overcome, create an advantage, attack, defend), and there are rules for how each skill can (or can’t) do each of those actions. Which I think is a really cool, simple system that does a good job of sort of unifying everything and creating a structure for what you can do.

But I also felt like it was overly limiting. The only ways, according to the rules, that you can physically attack is with your fight and shoot skills. And... aside from the fact that I just find that really boring, I think it betrays the narrative focus at the core of the game. Someone should be able to say “My character fights by dancing and jumping around so they attack with athletics” or “my character is just big and heavy and strong so they attack with physique.”

And it could be situational! That athletic character gets stuck in a tight hallway where they have limited mobility and they have to attack with fight. A sneaky character is hidden in the shadows and they get to attack with stealth. To me, this is stuff that should be determined by situational or character reasons, not by “well, the rule book says these are the only skills you can attack with.”

But also, if your characters can attack with a variety of skills, then you can have their targets defend with a variety of skills, too! So maybe an attack using athletics is defended with athletics, but an attack using stealth is defended with notice. And now, rather than one character being the best at fighting, always, different characters and different strategies are more effective against different targets! And that’s fun!

This is something you see in D&D or Pathfinder, where different spellcasters use different stats (intelligence or wisdom or charisma) for spellcasting depending on their class. And I always thought that was a cool idea, and I feel like it could be applied more broadly. I don’t think people should have to feel like they HAVE to take points in a certain stat or skill, if they can come up with how they get around it.

Which, I guess ultimately what I’m saying is players want to make the type of characters they want to make, and they want to be able to do cool shit with those characters, and I don’t think those two things should be in conflict with each other.

Most of this stuff wouldn’t be hard at all to house rule into Fate, really. This is just stuff I thought about a lot while playing it because it’s a system with a lot of interesting ideas that just... *almost* worked. So I spent a lot of time thinking about how I’d make it work myself and I had too many thoughts so I had to write a post about it, haha.

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hope-and-soap · 6 years

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“Cover it up”: Ragnarok and the scars of history (1/2)

Find part 2 here

Thor Ragnarok came out sometime in what was, for me, the middle of a term at uni – which meant, obviously, that I had something like negative four hours in which to go out and watch it. By the time I finally got myself into that theatre (four days ago, at about 3:45pm, a month and a half after the film first came out) I’d been spoiled enough by Tumblr to get some idea of what to expect. It was mostly the usual content, really: a few gifsets. Some really great fanart. A lot of rambling about something to do with Thor and a snake. I got my hopes up reasonably high.

What really got me excited, though, was this post by @deirdrearchleone, in which they talk about Ragnarok as an exploration of the ways in which colonial and imperialist histories corrode and corrupt societies built on oppression. The post (which is great, and you should read it if you haven’t) raised my expectations to a place that scared me a little – where before I’d have been happy with a fun romp with a great soundtrack, I went into the theatre today knowing I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I got a film much braver than I’d ever dared to hope for from Marvel. A film that really did say all those things I’d just read; a film that took a good hard look at the very same society from which it came – and every powerful society like it – and had the courage to say “let’s burn it down”.

Spoilers: I got it. It was wonderful. Thor: Ragnarok said everything I’d expected it to say. But it said a few things I wasn’t expecting, too – things about how these histories of violence damage not just societies, but individual people. About who inherits these histories. About what kind of scars this inheritance leaves.

That’s what I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about the Revengers.

“Banner! Hey, Banner!

“No Banner, only Hulk!”

Let’s start, then, with the Hulk. Hulk is something of an anomaly, as superheroes go; most heroes, no matter how violent, seem to see violence as a means to an end – whether that end happens to be fighting crime, defeating Nazis, or saving the world. But for Hulk, violence is the end to be pursued. He seems to actively enjoy fighting (“winning!”) in the Grandmaster’s games; he clearly recognises Thor, yet is unwilling to relent or make peace with him – a move which has to be driven by desire as, with the Grandmaster giving off every impression of being unwilling and even unable to hurt Hulk should he step out of line, it could hardly be driven by fear or desperation. Hulk doesn’t just fight, he revels in fighting, and in his own ability to defeat and destroy an opponent.

This is not, of course, to say that Hulk is a mindless monster: he’s clearly able to distinguish between enemies and allies, and to fight for the protection of the innocent. But he is more concerned with fighting evil than with ending it; for all his talk of winning, his motivation seems to be based not in a desire for victory but in a love of battle. His rationale for fighting Sutur is straightforward: “but, giant monster!” – there is an evil there, a threat, and so it must be fought. He is not, here, considering tactics, consequences, even the chances of his own survival – his instinct, and his desire, is simply to take the bad thing and pummel it into the ground. The Hulk is, essentially, a creature of anger, not just because he’s “always, always angry”, but because this anger forms the beating heart of everything he thinks and does.

The thing about Hulk is that he does not simply exist – he has to be summoned, let loose, chosen. And this choice is made because he is necessary. Hulk comes when he is needed – in situations which are already violent, like the gladiatorial fights, where only the angry and strong survive; in situations where people need saving, and the threat is greater than anyone else can handle. Where battle is necessary and unavoidable, where monsters exist, where anger is a shield against an even greater horror. Bruce Banner hates the Hulk; he summons him when has no other options. He becomes angry because he has to.

It’s in this context that we have to look at what Banner has to say about his own loss of control. He’s been the Hulk for too long, given him too much power; trapped in a situation where he has had no choice but to be angry, constantly, at all times, he’s forgotten how to be anything else. The creature of anger has seized control because he’s had control for such a long time. Violence has, in this way, infected Banner – he has been practicing it so long that it has gone from being a tool he can wield to being the hand on the wheel, the one with the power, the default state.

The more the Hulk is released, the less control Banner has. The more likely it becomes that Banner will never come back. That Banner will lose himself to this creature of anger; that he will never be anything but that. And we can’t blame the Hulk for that. We can’t blame Banner. He is not to blame. The world is.

That’s the horror of it, really – of evils that need fighting. It is not the chance that we may lose; it’s not even the damage we sustain. It’s the way in which they turn us into creatures of anger. Creatures that are necessary, who might even be heroes, but creatures who are not us – creatures who want nothing more than to smash, to destroy; who lose the ability to want anything else. Systems of violence and oppression don’t just steal our freedom or our money or our happiness – they also steal our control, our peace, our selves. They make us always angry. They make us want to fight. They make us release the Hulk, to save or protect or just to survive, even when we know we might never come back from that. They make us make those choices.

The worst part, of course, is that this is the very thing that ought to make us angry.

“I’m a scrapper, not a Valkyrie”

Valkyrie doesn’t have a name. That’s one of the first things I want to point out about her – the fact that she doesn’t have a name. She’s Scrapper 142 and she’s Valkyrie – a pair of designations that mark her not as an individual but as a member of a community. And that is, ultimately, what she is. She is a member of a community, a victim of violence not just against her personally but against her family and her kind.

I want to take a moment and talk for a bit about collective histories. There has been, lately, I think, a move away from collective History and towards personal histories – a desire to tell not the story of a race or a nation but the stories of individual people. And I love that movement, honestly. If you’ve read any of my other writing you’ll know that I tend to hate totalising narratives, that I see them as oppressive and repressive and stifling, that I place a lot of value on the smaller stories we get to tell about ourselves.

But I think something gets lost when we mark this sort of divide between stories and the Story, between History and histories. Because we start to think of everyone’s story as personally determined. We are the masters of our fates. We are the captains of our souls. We are not affected by things that happen around us, or to people we love, or to people who look like us, or just to people, some time in the past. We talk about individual stories like it gives us some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that allows us to forget that history exists, or has ever existed, or has ever hurt – not just for the people who lived it, for whom History has straightforwardly become a part of their stories, but also those who have had to read it, and record it, and remember.

I’m Singaporean. I’m Chinese. I’m a woman. I know I live in privilege. I come from a middle-class family and I have never lacked for anything. I’ve had every educational opportunity. I have wonderful parents, friends who love me. Up till I was nineteen I’d never experienced racial discrimination in any real way. History never laid a finger on me; I never fought in a war or had to kowtow to my Colonial Overlords. That wasn’t my story. I am not that person. I am happy and I am lucky and I escaped.

But I am also: one of the colonised. A Yellow Oriental. A member of the weaker sex. I am one of a collective, a member of a community, a victim of shared history. And fuck if that doesn’t make me angry, if I don’t think about that every day. If it doesn’t worm itself deeper into my skin every time I hear someone direct a racial slur at someone not me, every time I hear about another Weinstein or Spacey or Hoffmann. Every time I hear some Englishman or American talk about foreigners coming into their country and taking everything. Every time I turn on the television.

Valkyrie’s story is different from mine. She suffered; I didn’t. She lost people; I didn’t. She faced down evil and felt it scar her. I didn’t. But then again, maybe I did.

When Valkyrie runs, she runs not just from her history but from History, the wounds of her community. She runs from her own identity, yes, but also from the collective identity that ties her into that history. She’s not a Valkyrie; she’s a scrapper. She’s just one person lost in space, not the last remnant of a community torn apart by violence – her losses are personal, only personal, and so they are smaller. She opts for smaller personal trauma because it’s easier to carry than the pain of everything done not just to her but to her people too. She opts to hide. She opts to forget.

And I know the feeling. I understand the impulse. And yeah, I cheered, too, when she put her uniform back on and fought. I cheered when she decided to reclaim that identity. I cheered when she decided to remember. But there was a part of me that wished she’d been able to not – that that had been more of a choice than it was.

Because it wasn’t, really, was it? She would always have had to fight, because she never could have forgotten. She could never have not been a Valkyrie, a part of that community, an inheritor of that history.

After all, after all – it’s written on her skin.

#thor ragnarok #meta #valkyrie #bruce banner #hulk #post-colonialism

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